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Troika presses for more prescriptions of generic drugs

Greece is under pressure from the troika to increase the prescription of cheaper, generic medicines, which has only reached around 20 percent, Health Minister Adonis Georgiadis said on Wednesday.

Speaking at a pharmaceutical conference in Athens, Georgiadis said that Greece has to raise the prescription rate of non-brand name drugs to around 60 percent as part of its effort to limit public spending on medicines to less than 2 billion euros a year.

“The measures we have adopted to increase the penetration of generic drugs have failed,” said Georgiadis. According to the European Generic Medicines Association, generic drugs account for 50 percent all medicines dispensed in the European Union but only 18 percent of total pharmaceutical expenditure.